My Mother's Silence (ARC) Read online

  It’s time to face up to the answer. I focus on the one solid inimitable fact, clinging to it like a little plant on the edge of a cliff.

  She’s my mum, and I love her.

  I knock on the door. The dripping rain marks time as I wait. There’s no sound from inside. Another change from when I was growing up and we always had at least one dog, sometimes as many as three, who used to bark when people came to the door.

  Now the silence is unsettling. Mum was in the kitchen, surely she saw the car pull up. With every long second, my heart beats faster. In years past, Bill’s emails were usually along the lines of: ‘I know you’re busy, but it would be great if you could give Mum a call,’ or ‘Just a reminder that it’s Mum’s birthday next week.’ But in the last few years, they’ve been more carefully worded. ‘Mum’s having a little trouble remembering things.’ ‘Mum sometimes gets disoriented.’ And in the last few months, more pointed: ‘Look, we need to talk. I can’t do this alone.’ I never knew how to respond to those messages. It hurt knowing that my brother probably thought the worst, thinking me callous and indifferent. And maybe I should have told him the reason I stayed away for all those years. Maybe it’s not too late…

  I knock again, harder this time. I begin to shiver and not just from the cold.

  And then finally I hear it: a sound from inside. Slow footsteps approaching the door. A dull thudding in between each step. The chain rattles. The door opens.

  ‘Mum,’ I say, my voice hoarse.

  She’s smaller and slighter than I remember, with bobbed hair that’s gone completely white. But the warm scent of lavender and apple hasn’t changed. Her face is lined, but her hazel-green eyes are the same.

  ‘Skye…?’ She lifts a hand almost to my face, and I can see that it’s trembling. And then I lose it completely. I open my arms, and crush her inside of them. My tears fall into her hair, and she’s shaking as I hold her. But I’m smiling too, and somewhere inside of me the sun is trying to burst through what had seemed like impenetrable clouds.

  She recovers before I do, pulling away to hold me at arm’s length. ‘It really is you,’ she says, a quaver in her voice.

  Whatever I was going to say at this moment – whatever I’d rehearsed – all falls by the wayside. Right now there’s no room for all the apologies that will need to be said, on my part at least. It’s as if a bubble has closed around us, two people whose lives are inextricably linked. At this moment, I am glad that I am alive.

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘It’s so good to see you.’

  ‘You’re soaked through.’ She falls into the role of caregiver. ‘I’ll put the kettle on.’

  She begins to move towards the kitchen and I realise why it took her so long to answer the door. She’s leaning on a wooden cane, her left foot in a dark nylon sock but no shoe. Her walk is slow and stiff, her back hunched over. I’m a little shocked. Mum was always so robust. A pillar supporting our family, almost frighteningly strong. Now, though, she looks… old.

  I take off my wet coat and hang it on a peg beside the door, adding my boots to the neat line of shoes underneath. The cottage too seems smaller, the ceiling lower than I’ve remembered. Certainly, it never used to be so tidy. When I was nineteen and Bill was sixteen, our stuff was everywhere. Bill was into racing bicycles and wanted to compete in the Tour de France – a goal that ended as soon as he got his driving license. I remember his huge bike parked in this room, along with his shinty stick, ice skates, and rugby kit. There was also the music equipment: guitars and stands, amps, cases – it’s a wonder that there was room for any furniture or people.

  Now all of that is gone. There’s a sofa along the far wall and two armchairs in front of the fireplace. It might be our old sofa and chairs, but if so, they’ve been recovered with blue corduroy fabric, accented with blue and white floral cushions. The nostalgic part of me had hoped to see a tree up; Mum went all out for Christmas when we were growing up. Now, though, it could be any time of year.

  In a way, I’m relieved that so much has changed. Maybe Mum felt the need to extract and extinguish the memories and grief of that time, just like I did. She didn’t have the luxury of running halfway around the world to do it. She had to be content with new sofa coverings and cushions.

  My eye is drawn to the photos on the mantle shelf. However long I stay, there will be many things that I have to face. This is one of them.

  I look at each photo, trying to remain impassive. If we were a normal family, I might be a little put out that most of them are of Bill, his wife, Fiona, and their three kids. There’s a wedding photo; a photo of the five of them on a beach holding up a huge fish; Bill holding a baby in his arms; two toddlers and a little girl together in a bathtub making funny faces; the same little girl sitting at a piano. As I move down the row to the last three photos, my throat tightens. There’s a photo of Ginny and me on a stage singing into microphones, and our school photos from our last year.

  I stare at Ginny’s school photo. Maybe it’s the fact that no one ever looks good in a school photo, but she seems somehow less than the girl in my memory. Less beautiful, less talented. It’s as if the camera couldn’t capture the essence of her: her wonderful spirit, the light in her eyes. I feel an overwhelming surge of grief. The real Ginny – my Ginny – is gone.

  ‘I’ve got shortbread and ginger biscuits. Which would you prefer?’

  Mum has come back into the room. She leans on her cane and watches me looking at the photos. The crinkle between her brows gets a little deeper. But biscuits is a topic I can handle. ‘I’ll have shortbread,’ I say. ‘But I can get it.’

  She waves away my offer of assistance. I follow her into the kitchen. Over the years, I’ve bought Scottish shortbread occasionally from the supermarket, or else people have given it to me as a gift at Christmas thinking that I would enjoy a little ‘taste of home’. But it’s never been the same as Mum’s shortbread, so rich and melt-in-the-mouth buttery.

  Mum leans her cane against the sink and pours boiling water from the kettle into the teapot. It’s the same teapot with pink roses on a gold trellis that I remember from my childhood. It looks out of place, unstuck in time. Everything else has changed so much. The walls that were once yellow have been repainted a neutral cream. There are new worktops, and the big wooden table that took up almost the entire room has been replaced by a smaller one made of light wood. The front of the fridge that used to be covered with certificates, reminders, and letters from school is now bare except for a red-striped tea towel hanging on a magnetic hook. Near the back door, there’s a recycling bin. On top is a tartan packet: Walkers Shortbread. Was Mum’s shortbread always from a packet? Did I only imagine that it was homemade?

  I hover awkwardly. ‘I love what you’ve done with the place,’ I say, trying small talk. Mum puts the teapot on a tray, along with two cups and the plate of biscuits. I angle in to pick up the tray, but Mum blocks me. The dishes rattle unsteadily as she takes a tentative step towards the table without her cane. I hold my breath, ready to catch her…

  She brings the tray to a successful landing on the table.

  ‘Please sit down,’ she says.

  I sit. She scrapes back a chair and lowers herself down on it. I can see the sharp bones of her shoulders underneath her blue cotton blouse.

  ‘The house needed doing.’ Mum sets out the cups: white with gold rims, not the blue stoneware mugs we had before, and pours the tea. ‘Annie, from the village, helped me. She’s remarried now to a carpenter. Greg.’

  ‘I saw her in the pub when I was getting a taxi.’ I take a sip of the tea: a mix of rosehip and Earl Grey. ‘She seems, um… different.’

  ‘Well, I guess we’re all different.’ Mum winces as she takes a sip of her tea, like she’s burned her throat.

  ‘Yes.’ I’m not sure how to respond to this undeniable fact. Older, sadder, and probably not an awful lot wiser. In my case, at least. ‘I saw Byron too, tending bar. And Lachlan is the taxi driver. But I’m sure you know that.�
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  She stares down into her teacup like she doesn’t know what to say. Any more than I do.

  ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘And there’s a man staying at one of the cottages. The smaller one: “Skybird”.’

  Skybird… Why did Mum choose that name? ‘Skybird’ was one of the last songs Ginny and I wrote together. It was our eighteen-year-old take on the legend of Tristan and Isolde. Isolde stands by the shore waiting for her lover to return. She sees a boat on the horizon with black sails, which means that Tristan is dead. As Isolde throws herself into the sea and drowns, a flock of crows flies off the masts to reveal white sails. Tristan sees Isolde floating on the water, the birds circling around her body.

  Most of our songs from back then were laughably bad. But we were proud of ‘Skybird’. I can still hear my sister singing the chorus, in her high, pure voice: Fly bird, skyward, bring my love home to me. When Ginny sustained a note, the vibrato sounded as if something was spinning, like a perfect snowflake whirling and turning carelessly as it falls from the sky.

  I shudder and take another sip of tea. Mum too seems stunned by a memory. I surreptitiously push my plate of shortbread towards her and she eats it without realising. ‘It will be nice to have music again in the house now that Skye is home,’ she says. ‘I’m looking forward to that. You can sing…’

  My hand pauses with the teacup raised halfway to my mouth.

  ‘I’ve missed hearing your beautiful voice, Ginny.’

  The words from Bill’s last email flash into my mind. ‘Most of the time she’s fine. But sometimes, she loses the plot.’

  My hand jitters and I set down the cup. I wish I’d emailed back and asked what to do. Do I take the tough-love approach and calmly inform her that she will not be hearing Ginny’s beautiful voice ever again because Ginny is dead? Or do I change the subject and hope she snaps out of it?

  I try the latter approach.

  ‘So when is Bill coming? I’m really looking forward to seeing the kids. It’s been a while.’ I ramble on. ‘I saw them about eighteen months ago, did he tell you? They went to Disney World in Florida. I had a gig in Charlotte – that’s in North Carolina – so I popped down and saw them for the weekend.’

  I watch her face. Whatever temporary bubble world she was in a moment ago seems to have shattered. Her face goes blank and she looks confused. She opens her mouth and closes it again without speaking.

  ‘I got a few gifts on my way here,’ I continue. ‘Just little stuff. And do you think we might have a tree? I mean, I don’t want to add extra work for you – or me—’ I laugh awkwardly. ‘But it would be nice for the kids. Are the decorations still in the attic? I could get them down…’

  Mum sighs. I sense that she’s fully back now and reality is not as nice as the fugue world. ‘Your dad used to hit his head every year on that beam getting those boxes down,’ she says. ‘Do you remember?’

  ‘I do,’ I say, feeling a sharp pang of loss. Dad was a gentle, unassuming man with a kind word and comforting saying for every situation. He drove almost a hundred miles each day in his little red van, delivering the post to the villages and farms near the coast. He never missed a day of work no matter what the weather. Music was Dad’s passion. He played guitar and whistle, and we spent a few summers in ear-splitting discomfort when he tried and failed to learn the pipes. He loved a good rousing Jacobite song, belting out in his terrible singing voice the praises of Bonnie Prince Charlie, while the rest of us tapped our feet and laughed. Like Dad, I took to playing instruments. By the time I was twelve, I could play guitar, mandolin, fiddle, bodhrán, and keyboards. Ginny played guitar and she taught herself to play a Celtic harp that someone in the village was getting rid of. But mostly, Ginny was the singer, the star performer. We made a great team.

  And then, when I was sixteen, Dad died. One morning on his rounds, he stopped to help a farmer deliver a breached calf in a driving rainstorm. That night he came down with a cold that turned into pneumonia. He tried to joke about it: ‘Feels like an elephant on my chest,’ and ‘Caught a wee nip, but I’ll be right as rain.’ We believed him: Dad never lied, and no one dies of pneumonia in this day and age. The doctor came and Dad was taken to hospital. I think his greatest tragedy was that he died there, instead of at home. He was lucky, though, to be spared what happened later.

  Mum accepted Dad’s death with a stiff upper lip wrought from Scottish steel. I remember her standing next to his coffin during the service, her mouth in a thin, flat line. Maybe it was Dad’s death that began our family’s slow, downwards spiral. I don’t know. When Dad died, I lost the person I loved most in the world. But when Ginny died three years later, it was like half of my soul was extinguished forever.

  And Mum… Dad’s death affected her more than she let us see. She became harder, sharper – on the outside, at least. At night, though, I’d sometimes hear her talking to him, as if he were there with her in her room. I’d sometimes hear her cry.

  She didn’t cry when Ginny died. Maybe she did, later on. I didn’t stick around long enough to find out.

  I smile wistfully at Mum. ‘I do remember. It was the only time he ever swore.’

  ‘Yes, your dad didn’t like swearing.’ Mum pours the last of the tea into my cup. ‘He used to say that we’re smarter than that, we have a better vocabulary and don’t have to use that kind of language.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I say fondly. That was such a Dad thing to say.

  ‘Anyway…’ Mum shrugs, ‘the boxes are still there if you want to get them down. Obviously, being here alone most years, I haven’t bothered.’

  I analyse her manner to see if that’s meant as a dig or a guilt trip. As far as I can tell, though, she’s just stating a fact.

  ‘I understand,’ I say neutrally. ‘Can I do anything else? I’d like to help out while I’m here.’

  Mum gives me a sideways frown almost like I’m a stranger. Is this how it’s going to be? Am I going to worry over each look, each cloud passing over her face? Worry that she doesn’t know me; that she doesn’t want me here after all?

  ‘I mean, that way you can rest your leg,’ I continue. ‘I can go to the shops for you or help with tidying up. I must admit, though, I’m still a terrible cook.’ I give her a sheepish grin. ‘So you might not want to delegate that.’

  I begin piling the dishes onto the tray. I’m trying hard. Too hard. Mum doesn’t respond. It’s killing me that she seems so bland. So entirely lacking in any kind of sparkle or warmth or wit – not like I remember her at all. Mum was always the smartest person I knew. She taught maths at the local school up until the time Dad passed. I was never very good at schoolwork, and I was a genius compared to Ginny. No, in our family, Mum was the quick, intelligent one. But time, grief, and tragedy seem to have dulled that edge, put out that fire.

  I stand up to take the tray to the sink. Mum pushes her chair back too, as if she’s trying to beat me to it.

  ‘It’s OK,’ I say with a brittle smile. ‘I can do the washing-up.’ In my peripheral vision, I’m aware of her levering herself to her feet, gripping the edge of the table and the chair. The chair wobbles precariously. A knot of tension forms in my chest. Her cane is still leaning against the cabinets near where I’m standing. I grab it and hold it out to her.

  ‘Here, Mum,’ I say. ‘Do you need this?’

  She ignores me again and hobbles over to the sink, wincing a little. She props against the edge and runs the water, waiting for it to get hot.

  ‘You must be tired after your long journey,’ Mum says, not looking at me. ‘Why don’t you have a rest? I’ll heat up some stew for supper.’

  ‘I can do—’ I start to say. Her shoulders stiffen. I break off, leaning the cane back where it was. ‘That sounds good, thanks.’ I hold in a sigh. It’s clear that the only way to end this odd little power struggle is for me to give in.

  For the first time since I arrived, a smile ghosts across her face. Mum squirts soap in the sink. I notice that her good ankle is shaking a little fro
m the effort of supporting all of her weight. I look away. I can’t watch. I need space… air…

  ‘You’re in your old room,’ Mum says.

  My old room. I was expecting that, and yet, the words make my skin feel clammy.

  ‘Um, OK.’ I squeeze out the words. ‘And I might have a quick shower. Travel makes me feel so grimy.’

  ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Fine.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  I’m in such a hurry to get out of the kitchen that I trip over the little ridge of carpet on my way to the sitting room and I have to grab the wall to steady myself. I get my suitcase and handbag to take upstairs. My eyes snag once again on the photos. The photo. Yes, it’s a terrible school photo, and we always hated having those taken. But from this angle, I get the feeling that Ginny is looking back at me… and laughing.

  5

  Mum asked for me: she must want me here. So why not accept my help? It’s painful to feel like such a complete stranger, especially in a place that’s so familiar. Too familiar…

  As I climb the stairs, my suitcase feels heavier with each step. There’s a hallway at the top that leads to the three bedrooms and the bathroom. The hall has been repainted, the white walls bare, except for a few framed needlepoints and an oil painting of Glenfinnan that looks like it came from a charity shop. The old burgundy carpet runner has been replaced with one in dark beige. For a second, I allow myself to feel hopeful. Maybe Mum’s redone all the bedrooms too, making each one into a neat, cosy space with white walls, flat-packed furniture, and a pot of heather on the windowsill. If that’s the case, then maybe everything will be fine. Maybe…

  I continue past Mum’s room, Bill’s old room, and the bathroom. Each step is unbearable as I approach the room at the end of the hall that I shared with my sister for almost twenty years. The moment I see the sign on the door, all hope evaporates: Stage door. My hand shakes as I turn the knob and switch on the light.